‘Not yet,’ I replied. Some of us built them up and were disappointed, others built them down so they wouldn’t be. All of us thought about them.

‘Any clues?’

‘My Volkswagen,’ I replied. ‘It was abandoned with me in it. I’m going to find out its previous owners when I become a citizen. You?’

‘My only clue was a weekday return to Carlisle and a medal,’ replied Tiger, ‘placed in my basket when I was left outside the convent. It was a Fourth Troll Wars campaign medal with a Valour clasp.’

We sat in silence for a moment.

‘Lots of parents lost in the Troll Wars,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Tiger in a quiet voice, ‘lots.’

I stretched and stood up. It was getting late.

‘Good first day, Tiger, thanks.’

‘I didn’t do much.’

‘It’s what you didn’t do that matters.’

‘And what didn’t I do?’

‘You didn’t run away screaming, or try to fight me, or make peculiar demands.’

‘I like to think the Prawns are like that,’ he said with a smile, ‘loyal and dedicated.’

‘How about fearless?’

He looked at the Quarkbeast.

‘We’re working on that.’

I saw him up to his room and asked whether he needed anything, and he said he was just fine, and everything was 100 per cent faberoo as he had his own room and that was the best thing ever, even if it was enchanted. I went down to my own room and brushed my teeth, then climbed into my pyjamas and got into bed, taking the precaution of laying out a blanket on the floor with a pillow, just in case. I then had another thought and took down the poster of Sir Matt Grifflon as it made me seem a little undignified. I rolled up the picture of the Kingdom’s premier heart-throb and placed it in the cupboard.

I had read for only a few minutes when the door opened and Tiger tiptoed in, snugged up in the blanket I had laid out and sighed deeply. He’d never slept on his own before.

‘Goodnight, Tiger.’

‘Goodnight, Jenny.’

The Magiclysm

The Magiclysm

I didn’t sleep well that night. It wasn’t my fault; there was something in the air. Sorcerers tend to transmit their emotions when excited, upset, anxious or confused, and it permeates through the building like smelly drains. I’d taken to sleeping under an aluminised eiderdown, but it hadn’t helped – and was quite possibly a practical joke played by Wizard Moobin, who thought giving duff advice to juniors funny. For years he’d maintained that the Three Degrees were a triumvirate of sorceresses who specialised in reducing the temperature to just above absolute zero.